1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a sewing machine which executes a sewing operation so that a sewing pattern selected from a plurality of sewing patterns is sewn.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have conventionally been provided, for example, household electronically controlled sewing machines which are capable of sewing a number of sewing patterns including utility patterns, character patterns, decorative patterns and the like. This type of sewing machine comprises a control device incorporated with a read only memory (ROM), a ROM card, etc. all of which store pattern display data regarding a number of sewing patterns and sewing data in correspondence with pattern numbers. In this case, a user operates a pattern selecting device to select a desired sewing pattern. The control device is designed to read sewing data of the selected sewing pattern from the ROM, controlling a sewing mechanism based on the read sewing data thereby to execute a sewing operation.
For example, JP-A-H09-132859 discloses an embroidery sewing machine as a first example of the aforesaid pattern selecting device. The disclosed embroidery sewing machine comprises a large-sized liquid crystal display provided on the front of a sewing pillar. The liquid crystal display includes a touch panel provided on the surface of the liquid crystal display. One screen of the liquid crystal display is adapted to display a number of images of sewing patterns (23 images) each in the form of an operation key (icon). The user touches a part of the touch panel on which a desired sewing pattern is displayed, thereby selecting the desired sewing pattern. More than 100 sewing patterns are available. The screen on which the user selects a sewing pattern extends to a plurality of pages. Accordingly, when cannot find a desired sewing pattern on one page, the user manipulates a page scroll key to refer to another page.
In the aforesaid first example, however, a larger-sized display with a touch panel is necessitated to achieve a high visibility and operability, resulting in a cost increase. In this case, small-sized sewing machines and general household sewing machines have employed relatively small-sized displays in view of problems of spacing or costs.
Furthermore, JP-A-H03-60689 as a second example and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,550 disclose a sewing machine including an operation panel mounted on a front of a sewing pillar. The operation panel is provided with a numeral keypad and a small-sized display. The user manipulates the numeral keypad to input a pattern number, thereby designating a desired one of a plurality of sewing patterns.
The display can be rendered relatively smaller in the second example. However, when the number of sewing patterns exceeds 100, for example, it takes a certain time period for the user to look up in a sewing pattern from a list of patterns. With this, the user needs to enter a three-digit numeral operating the keypad. This operation tends to be accompanied with error and thus results in a problem of low operability.